Category Archives: News & Media

The world around us… and the stupid things that are happening in it…

Bias Much?

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I was working in a FEMA office when the first reports of levees breaking in New Orleans came across the wires. Within minutes it seemed that the federal government was useless and the administration incompetent.

Today, five days after Sandy pummeled the East Coast, residents of New York and New Jersey are in almost exactly the same situation, but the media collectively don’t seem to be pounding the same drum.

I’ve certainly got my own view on why the two stories seem to be getting different treatment. I hope there are plenty of people out there in the blogosphere noticing the same thing. And above all, I hope there are readers from coast to coast wondering why one was the “story of the century” and the other doesn’t seem to be getting much more attention than a few “human interest” stories. It would be farcical if the result wasn’t so damned important.

The dawn’s early light…

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It’s just after 7:30 AM and there’s just enough light now to start seeing the world beyond the four apparently study walls of Rental Casa de Jeff. I’m happy to say that a quick check of the perimeter, accompanied by two less than enthusiastic dogs, shows no real damage to the structure. The only thing that is out of place is a lilac bush that seems to be leaning an at unnatural angle against the fence. I have no intention of really looking at that until this damnable cold rain lets off. With the sound of the wind last night, I was expecting much, much worse in the dawn’s early light. Once again my general pessimism about the way of things has paid off by letting me be pleasantly surprised this morning. Even so, I have to confess that I’d rather experience storms from video wall on the 2nd floor of FEMA’s office downtown than listening to it happen around me in real time.

For now, the coffee is on, I’ve got a propane wall heater taking the chill off the 61 degree kitchen, and everything is watertight. With the number of friends who have taken on water or had other damage, I realize how fortunate I’ve been. Once I’ve got some caffein back in my system, I’ll get the computer equipment back out of it’s watertight storage and start getting everything back online.

For my readers, friends, and family, I hope all is well. Stay warm, stay safe, and I’ll see you when all this finally blows over.

Plans unplanned…

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I took today off because I was supposed to have Winston’s 6 week follow-up visit with the vet as well as my own annual eye exam later in the day. We all know I like it when days off are productive days. Sure, this is a theoretical “once in a lifetime storm event,” but I can’t be the only one sitting around annoyed that nature is dinking around with things I need to get done. I’ll do my best to remind myself that this is officially now a “free” day off and I’ll be able to rescheduled my leave to another day… so if nothing else, it’s a two-fer in terms of getting out of the office. That perspective makes using one of them to do nothing other than sit around the house today much more tolerable. Happy hurricane-ing.

Older, fatter, and balder…

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In the face of “impending weather catastrophes” it seems that everyone becomes an older, fatter, and balder version of their 12 year old self… with the most prominent questions of the day focused on pondering the mysteries of how and when a decision might be made to close the office and whether it’s best to pick up a cubic yard of toilet paper after work or wait to the early hours of the morning to make a market run. Since I’m already taking the day off Monday, the question is pretty much academic… unless the whole system slows down and doesn’t start rolling in until late in the day Monday or very early Tuesday morning. What I’m really looking for here is a healthy dose of mayhem and chaos, by which I mean enough to extend the weekend, but not enough to cause a disruption in the power supply… because let’s face it, a day with no electricity isn’t really any better than a day at work.

Master debaters…

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Tonight is the last of three scheduled presidential debates in this most important of election years. If you don’t tune in, you’re going to miss out on the two principle candidates for office bashing one another about their respective positions on U.S. foreign policy. If they don’t use up all available time calling one another names and making faces, we might just hear a few words about pressing international issues – Libya, Iran, and how America’s increasing sovereign debt limits our influence in the world jump to mind as items they may touch on over the course of 90 minutes.

If you plan on voting in the presidential election, please tune in at 9:00 PM (EDT) to the station of your choice and follow along. If you don’t plan on voting, or can’t be bothered with learning a little about the candidates or their position, then feel free to tune into to reruns of Honey Boo Boo, Jersey Shore, or Real Housewives for your daily dose of What’s Wrong with America.

This has been an unpaid public service announcement brought to you by http://www.jeffreytharp.com. I’m going to try to keep my snarky commentary off Facebook tonight, so make sure to keep up with @jdtharp on twitter. My name is Jeffrey Tharp and I approved this message.

Overboard…

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It occurs to me that it’s possible I’ve gone slightly overboard in my relentless pursuit of lowering my cable bill without giving up access to Game of Thrones when it starts airing again in March. Since I live in the middle of nowhere (that’s not a complaint, by the way, simply a statement of fact), I’m not sure it’s going to have the oomph to pull in a signal from Philly or Baltimore, but I’m going to be playing around with an OTA television antenna for the first time. That’s not quite true, I suppose. Growing up there was an old TV in the basement that when they antenna was adjusted just right, could pick up two or three channels. Since the only thing I really use the TV in the bedroom for is to watch the morning news while I’m getting ready for work and catch the late news again before bed, I’m hoping that this will be the perfect excuse to jettison one more cable box and its associated fees from my plan. If it works in the bedroom, I’ll duplicate it downstairs. In the event it doesn’t work, I’ll pick up two new Apple TV boxes and just stream content either from the computer or the iPad. At first, this started out as a philosophical question about why I was paying for 200 channels I didn’t watch… It’s becoming something more like a holy quest… and those always turn out just great.

That’s debatable…

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So the first presidential debate of 2012 is supposed to be held on Wednesday night. I’ll be tuned in for much the same reason that people watch auto racing… in the hope that someone screws up and generates a wreck of historic proportions. Let’s face it, if you’re the kind of person who watches televised presidential debates, there’s a pretty good chance that you already know who’s getting your vote and the best you can hope for is the other guy might just flub a line and commit electoral suicide right there on the stage. It doesn’t happen often when you get to this level, but when they do, watching a presidential candidate self destruct on live television is absolutely something to see… assuming of course that it’s not your candidate who’s doing the imploding.

More than likely nothing that dramatic will happen Wednesday night. At best we might get some zingers and traded barbs. At worst neither of the candidates will stray from the talking points that they spent three days rehearsing before the big show. In that case, the debate is just the nationally televised beauty contest catering to our collective short attention span. They set the bar that low because it’s what we’ve come to expect from our presidential debates… and that’s the pity.

Once upon a time in America, men with big ideas stood toe-to-toe with one another explaining their beliefs and position before asking the people for their vote. They actually talked about an issue based on its relative merits rather than on fine tuned, ready for television sound bites based on what the poling sample said their opinions should be. The problem with debates today is that we go into them expecting Lincoln and Douglas, but we walk away having watched Tom and Jerry.

Yesterday…

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I was laying in bed flipping channels last night and landed on Discovery or National Geographic or some channel of their ilk that was showing clips from the September 11th attacks. They say that everyone has a handful of events that are seared into their memory and I guess for everyone above a certain age, that’s going to be one of them that sticks with us forever. Watching it last night felt unnervingly like seeing it happen again for the first time, maybe even worse now, because we know everything that’s still about to happen. The disbelief of watching the first plane strike the North Tower, the second plane streaking across the skyline and exploding through the South Tower, and the few grainy frames of a jetliner slamming into the Pentagon, still bring a visceral, sickening tightness to my chest.

Eleven years later, watching those towers fall still feels like getting hit with a sucker punch every single time I see it. Whenever I walk outside and look up to see a vibrant blue, cloudless sky, I remember… and it fills me with equal parts sadness and rage that such a thing could happen on our streets and in this country in the 21st century. Whether it’s 11 years, or fifty, or a lifetime, I don’t think that’s something that will ever go away. Eleven years gone, and it still feels like yesterday.

The invisible man…

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I grew up watching Dirty Harry and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly at my grandparents house when they ran as Sunday afternoon movies. I’m sure that’s the source of my deep, abiding love of Clint Eastwood as an actor. For my money, Gran Torino is probably one of the best movies made in the last twenty years and that earned him my respect for his abilities as a director. When they announced him as a speaker in prime time at the Republican National Convention, I was eager to see what he’d have to say. After all, the Republican Party as an enduring soft spot for the occasional conservative actor. They’ve done pretty well by us in the past.

As much as I was ready to love whatever he had to say, the reality of the thing was just painful to watch. The meandering, stilted speech wasn’t even in the same arena as what I expected. In another context, with another delivery, by someone other than Clint Eastwood, the conversation with “the invisible president” could possibly have worked. The worst part of it all was inside that hot mess was a kernel of what could have been a great and electrifying speech. As it was, the moment just left me wondering if I was watching an iconic actor have a mental break on live national television. By the end, all I could think of was please sweet baby Jesus, turn on the teleprompter and let the guy get back on script, in thy infinite mercy.

The days when nominees aren’t known until the convention meets are long gone and not likely to return, but last night proved that interesting things can still happen when a political party gathers all its sons and daughters into the tent. This particular prodigal son could have done without last night’s added drama.

Capacity…

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I’m not much of a philosopher, but I know this isn’t the time for politics or posturing. It’s the time to come together, however briefly, and recognize that our country has been made the victim of a violent and bloody act of domestic terrorism. It’s made all the more tragic because the mass violence was delivered up at the hands of a fellow citizen. A West Wing episode titled “20 Hours in America” aired almost a decade ago, but it’s one of those hours of television that kind of sticks with you once you’ve seen it. Responding to a domestic terror attack on the campus of fictitious Kennison State University, President Bartlet offered what, for my money, is one of the best monologs in ever put on film. Given the events of the day, I found it more appropriate than any and words I could come up with on my own.

So without further introduction, I give you President Bartlet:

More than any time in recent history, America’s destiny is not of our own choosing. We did not seek, nor did we provoke an assault on our freedom and our way of life. We did not expect nor did we invite a confrontation with evil. Yet the true measure of a people’s strength is how they rise to master that moment when it does arrive… Every time we think we have measured our capacity to meet a challenge, we look up and we’re reminded that that capacity may well be limitless. This is a time for American heroes. We will do what is hard. We will achieve what is great. This is a time for American heroes and we reach for the stars. God bless their memory. God bless you. And God bless the United States of America.

A clip of the entire scene is available on YouTube. If you’ve got two minutes, I highly suggest you give it a look. The image/sound quality isn’t great, but I think it serves the purpose.